Iraq’s Kurds, Turkish Officials Meet in Baghdad

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that a delegation of Iraq’s Kurdish leadership and Turkish government officials met with each other in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, earlier that day.

The Turks pressed Mahmoud Barzani, the president of the three-province semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, to crack down on the PKK in the region he is supposed to be in control of.

Incidentally, the meeting was held shortly after Turkish media reported that another five Turkish soldiers were killed by PKK terrorists.

Remarkably, whenever the Turks tell Iraq’s Kurds to crack down on the PKK, Kurdish authorities say there is not much they can do. At the same time, however, Iraqi ‘Kurdistan’ is the most stable region of Iraq because, thus claim the Iraqi government and Kurdish authorities, the people there are quite united and the government able to establish its authority.

It does not take a rocket scientists to conclude that something is amiss.

Turkey has talked to Iraq’s Kurds more often in the past, but not directly with Barzani himself, who the Turks consider to be, if not an active leader of the PKK and therefore partially responsible for the many Turkish deaths in the 24 years since the PKK launched its attack on Turkish targets everywhere, than at least as someone who lets them carry out their terrorist attacks, and gives spiritual support to their war.

We will see what happens: I’m not terribly hopeful. It seems to me that the Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq first have to be shown that if they do not cooperate, they will suffer just as much as the Turks, if not more.

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